Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday October 26, 2009 @04:24PM
from the criminals-just-need-a-bath dept.

A recent study is suggesting that moral behavior may be encouraged with nothing more than clean smells. The Brigham Young University professor found a "dramatic improvement in ethical behavior with just a few spritzes of citrus-scented Windex." "The researchers see implications for workplaces, retail stores and other organizations that have relied on traditional surveillance and security measures to enforce rules. Perhaps the findings could be applied at home, too, Liljenquist said with a smile. 'Could be that getting our kids to clean up their rooms might help them clean up their acts, too.' The study titled "The Smell of Virtue" was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex."

This might sound funny but that's very close to what some ultra-Orthodox Jews have been using in areas of Israel where they think that women aren't dressed modestly enough, or are too loud, or have perfume, or are walking down the wrong side of the street. Most common substances is pepper spray which doesn't smell so bad if you aren't on the receiving end. Boiling water and rocks have also been used. This is especially common in Meah Shearim, an ultra-Orthodox neighborhood in Jerusalem. See for example http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3795237,00.html [ynetnews.com] one of the very few cases where the police have actually tried to arrest the religious fanatics in question.

Don't get confused between groups. The settlers are generally dati le'umi (literally "religious nationalist"), they aren't charedi (ultra-orthodox). While some of the settlers are charedi that's not most of them. The settlers are people who would be by and large appalled by this behavior as everyone else. The ultra-orthodox aren't in favor generally of settling in that way; most of them don't even recognize the state of Israel.

Essentially, the settlers are a subfraction of what would be considered modera

I call bs...whenever an attractive woman walks by smelling like she just stepped out of the shower I have only immoral thoughts.

Really? That's extremely weird. When that happens to me I think about how much fun it would be to chat her up, get her naked and have wildly good sex with her.

What kind of immoral thoughts do you have? Do you feel sudden urges to restrict people's freedom of expression? Do you want to ban abortion? Or deprive people of life, liberty or property without due process of law?

And how on earth does an attractive women stimulate these thoughts? Or are they of the all-too-common immoral variety that she should be stoned to death for being more autonomous than you are comfortable with?

It is deeply sad that an attractive woman should stimulate immoral thoughts, rather than healthy and moral sexual desire.

Mill's utilitarianism model states that the best choice is the one that provides the most benefit for the most people. In terms of bank robbery, robbing a bank is highly ethical. The robber gets some money, that money gets spent, and a large trickle-down impacts the local economy. The bank is insured so they don't lose any money. The customers and tellers get some excitement and a story to tell for years. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was in a bank robbery?"

Kant's formal duty-based ethics means that you have to follow courses of action that are acceptable as universal principles for everyone to follow. Further, it is your INTENTION to follow the mores rather than your actions. Good will is the desire and intention to do one's duty. If your duty is to rob a bank, then robbing a bank is highly ethical. If they didn't expect you to rob it, they wouldn't spend all that time and money on robbery countermeasures.

Locke's rights-based ethics gives you rights based solely by your existence. The maximum possible liberty and happiness are fundamental; all other rights flow out of these basic ones. You are restricting the rights of the robbed in the bank, but as long as you are not taking their personal possessions (with the temporary exception of cell phones) you aren't treading on their rights significantly.

Finally, Aristotle's virtue ethics states that the goodness of an act or object depends on its function. A "good" knife cuts well; a "good" chair is comfy. So, a "good" bank robber is one that robs banks.

Mill's utilitarianism model states that the best choice is the one that provides the most benefit for the most people. In terms of bank robbery, robbing a bank is highly ethical. The robber gets some money, that money gets spent, and a large trickle-down impacts the local economy. The bank is insured so they don't lose any money. The customers and tellers get some excitement and a story to tell for years. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was in a bank robbery?"

In terms of bank robbery, robbing a bank is highly ethical. The robber gets some money, that money gets spent, and a large trickle-down impacts the local economy. The bank is insured so they don't lose any money. The customers and tellers get some excitement and a story to tell for years. "Hey, did I ever tell you about the time I was in a bank robbery?

I guess you've never heard of post traumatic stress? Or people getting killed in botched bank robberies? Or the fact that the money does come from somewhere.

It's a stupid study, this is something that humans have associated, best example is the hospital smell, whenever you feel that smell, you think about the hospital and everything that it meant for you, a loved one that died there, an operation a long time ago, etc. Some will associate that "clean smell" with an oppressive home, that will most likely make them hate the place, some people are natural slobs, even though their families are not, ever wonder why? it's a stupid study made for marketing purposes. S

The association of smell with memory is a well known mechanism, though. Evoke certain memories via particular smells? Certainly, you have a valid point there. I do wonder if the study took smell's use as a memory trigger into account. I suppose I could RTFA but that would be cheating...

Does everything have to be frickin scented? Crap, it seems like every frickin product around has got to have a scent. And there are waaayyyyyy too many people who have no familiarity with the idea of "less is more"... now we have to have scents to promote ethical behavior? Just get people to take showers and lay off all the perfumed crap. Sheeeesh.

I suspect that the reason is rather that unclean smells triggers the more competitive behavior of humans because it can be an indication of lack of food or other resources, which in turn means that the strongest and most resourceful can be the one that is gaining the most.

A clean smell can instead tell the subconscious mind that there is sufficient resources available.

So this may be a good reason to actually make sure that public areas are clean.

That conclusion isn't supported by the data. It is however interesting to note their earlier study about cleanliness, specifically that people who commit what the person considers a moral transgression they seek to cleanse their physical body. Something being clean seems to certainly have some sort of unconscious link if you take both of those studies into account. Interesting stuff.

That link has been known for several hundred years - it was a key plot element in Macbeth - and probably has a lot to do with the Christian tradition of baptism. I would be interested in any studies conducted in nations where there is no such tradition, to see which way around the causal relationship is (does baptism exist because people want to be physically as well as morally clean, or do people develop this association because of baptism?)

If a place smells like a moose just died in it, especially if its also visibly dirty, then I just sort of get the impression that it doesn't actually matter what I do in there. On the other hand, when a place is spotless, smells lemony fresh and everything appears in order then I'm not going to be the one to put my feet on the coffee table, no matter how tempting it might be. Smell ties into taste and is one of the more powerful senses we have, so it makes sense that it would play a large part in determining our impression of what is or isn't acceptable in a given location, every bit as much as it tells us what foods seem OK to eat.

Unfortunately the actual effect this is going to have is that every store that can get away with it will now treat air fresheners like fratboys treat axe.

Which will probably end up having an opposite effect. I know that whenever I smell highly excessive air freshener, or a highly excessive amount of perfume/cologne/etc on a person, I sometimes wonder what it is that they're trying so hard to cover up. Particularly that extremely potent lotion or perfume that some of the women at the office would use; seems like a few drops of that stuff will cover a square mile.

I am a psycholgist who works in occupational health and safety, and I have a problem with the release of the results of an unpublished study, which has yet to be read, judged and verified but which draws a conclusion that could lead to more chemicals being introduced into workplaces. They clearly have never looked at the rates of occupational asthma or considered how little information we have about the synergistic effects of the multitude of low hazard chemicals which already exist.

I have no problem with the study (in so far as it can be judged from the press release). Obviously, since they only measured smell vrs no smell they can only conclude that the smell was the cause of the difference in behaviour. But studies are always constrained by money/time/space constraints. But they haven't waited for the studies which look at "hamburger" smells or cultural differences or been cautious in their reporting.

They think thay windex is a "clean" smell rather that a "chemical smell" and "pleasing" rather than "annoying". If the article had been published I would have looked at how they accounted for the possibility that they been seduced by the obvious liguistic association between "clean" and "ethical" which may well be an artifact of (the english) language. There could have been other reasons, such as it gave the impression that the room was better tended or less neglected. This matters because this impression could then be created in ways that do not involve spraying more chemicals into workplace air.

Of course, all this is speculation, because we can't read the bloody study.

If a place smells like a moose just died in it, especially if its also visibly dirty, then I just sort of get the impression that it doesn't actually matter what I do in there. On the other hand, when a place is spotless, smells lemony fresh and everything appears in order then I'm not going to be the one to put my feet on the coffee table, no matter how tempting it might be. Smell ties into taste and is one of the more powerful senses we have, so it makes sense that it would play a large part in determining our impression of what is or isn't acceptable in a given location, every bit as much as it tells us what foods seem OK to eat.

But the interesting part about this study is that it wasn't measuring behaviour that would typically be linked to cleanliness (ie. putting your feet on the coffee table). It was looking into behaviour that should be consistent regardless what room you're in.

For example, people sitting in the "clean" room were more willing to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. They were also more willing to donate money to the cause.

Also interesting is that participants didn't actually consciously notice the sent in the roo

The assumption is that the subjects are drawing an unconscious assocation between Windex = Cleanliness = Spotless conscience = Honest behaviour. But why not Windex = Someone's cleaning the freakin' windows = I can be seen = honest behaviour.

If a place smells like a moose just died in it, especially if its also visibly dirty, then I just sort of get the impression that it doesn't actually matter what I do in there. On the other hand, when a place is spotless, smells lemony fresh and everything appears in order then I'm not going to be the one to put my feet on the coffee table, no matter how tempting it might be. Smell ties into taste and is one of the more powerful senses we have, so it makes sense that it would play a large part in determining our impression of what is or isn't acceptable in a given location, every bit as much as it tells us what foods seem OK to eat.

You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one. If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation.

For that reason, I take this to be further evidence that most people operate on a sort of auto-pilot.

You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one. If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation.

So, what, you're going to assume the study is invalid and/or useless because it doesn't fit with your naively rosy view of human behaviour? Well, no offense, but tough shit.

For that reason, I take this to be further evidence that most people operate on a sort of auto-pilot.

And I take it as further evidence that humans are, despite our fancy intellect, often little more than opportunistic animals. And personally, I'd rather we just admit that fact and use it as the starting point for improving ourselves, rather than living with the delusion that we're somehow inherently noble creatures. 'course, we should already realize this... if the Milgram experiment taught us anything, it's that human morals are things easily set aside given the right circumstances.

Isn't it amazing the venom that comes out of people when you make the simplest of observations? Yours is milder than most.

So, what, you're going to assume the study is invalid and/or useless because it doesn't fit with your naively rosy view of human behaviour? Well, no offense, but tough shit.

I said that most people aren't terribly committed to doing good and that they operate on a sort of auto-pilot, meaning they are not thinking beings who perform deliberate action, though potentially they could be. T

You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one.

You don't question it based on the fact that it might have been set up wrong. Or that they interpreted the results correctly. You don't attack the science based on facts and reason. No. You decide the study is without merit because, apparently, it doesn't fit with your worldview. That's irrational. It's also an excellent example of one of the true

You certainly do have a point, though I question the merits of a study like this one.

You don't question it based on the fact that it might have been set up wrong. Or that they interpreted the results correctly. You don't attack the science based on facts and reason. No. You decide the study is without merit because, apparently, it doesn't fit with your worldview. That's irrational. It's also an excellent example of one of the true ills of society today: The unwillingness of people to see the world for what it is, instead preferring to filter and bend fact to fit their own ideas of how the world actually works.

Actually the meaning of the results is precisely where I differ with this study. To me, they mean that most people are operating on a sort of auto-pilot and I have already explained why I believe so. Also, not once did I say it was without merit. Re-read my posts; you will not find me saying that anywhere. I said I question the merits. "Questioning" denotes uncertainty; it does not constitute a claim of either merit or lack thereof. This means you were dead wrong about what I said, and it also means t

There is a famous study (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect) in which they were looking at the effect of lighting levels on productivity in a manufacturing environment. If they turned up the light productivity improved, if they lowered lighting level productivity improved, if they returned lighting to the original level productivity improved. The reason was that changing light levels signaled to the workers that something was up and that they were likely being watched. Walk into a room drippin

"If scent made such a noticable difference, then you can safely say that these folks were not terribly committed to doing the Right Thing. They needed an external motivation. That's hardly as good as doing the best you can, all the time, because you seriously believe in and want to adhere to sound, timeless principles that have a solid ethical or moral foundation. "

That sounds like the distinction between Perfect and Imperfect Contrition in the Catholic Catechism. Perfect Contrition is when you are repentant of your sins because you love God and are sorry you have broken His agreement with you. Imperfect Contrition is when you are repentant because you don't want to go to Hell.

Guess what - either gets you into Heaven. Likewise, I'm not sure anyone should care WHY someone does the right thing, as long as they do it.

Let's say I am a general, in command of an army that is about to go to war. All other things being completely equal between the opposing armies, let's say that my army is entirely composed of volunteer, professional soldiers who truly believe in what we're fighting for. They believe in it so much that they are willing to lay down their lives and die for this cause with no coercion of any kind. The opposing army is composed entirely of conscripts who had to be threatened with imprisonment to get them to join the armed forces. They are otherwise equal in every way; equal amount of training, equal supplies, and equally good strategy is used by both sides.

If I were to place bets, I know which army I would bet for. There is a strength that comes from right motive that is unobtainable otherwise. While things are going well and everything is peachy, people who don't have much insight won't notice much difference between the person who fears Hell and the person who loves God. When the shit hits the fan, however, one of those is going to crumble first. One of those will panic and lose their heads first. It won't be the person with love, not if their love is real.

A lot of the good things that people try to do don't have the full effectiveness that they could have had. They don't really reach the recipients, don't really get them to look at their lives and their values differently the way they could have done. That's because many people who do good deeds do them for less-than-pure reasons. They want to be thought of as good by others, they want to impress others, or they want some kind of recognition or favor in return. They give in order to get. This deprives them of the chance to do something truly self-less, which is its own reward, and it deprives the recipients of seeing what it looks like when such a self-less act takes place. It's business as usual, just a bit more favorable.

The whole problem I have with most organized religions and most of the people in them is that they do things because they think they're supposed to. They fear hell or they fear the condemnation of others. They operate out of that fear and it is the energy which fuels their actions. So you can go to most churches and you find people who judge you by how you dress, whether you're "clean-cut", and other superficial meaningless things, but you don't see very much that really resembles unconditional love. There is a universe of difference between acting out of a fear of negative consequences and acting out of a real delight of having done the right thing, for both the giver and the receiver. I mourn the fact that we live in a society that is so blind and superficial that every last person doesn't consider this to be obvious.

I've spent a little time around a moose that had just died. It didn't smell bad at all. In fact, once a tenderloin was sizzling up with some mushrooms and onions, garlic and seasoning, it smelled pretty damn good.

Now, if you are talking about a place that smelled like a moose died in it last month, then I'm with you.

There's no link to the original study, but it was clear from the article that there was no control group. They had a scented room vs. an unscented room, when what they should have had was a "pleasantly" scented room vs. an "unpleasantly" scented room with a third, unscented room as the control. Then they should have done some feedback questionnaires at the conclusion, in which they could have buried a question or two regarding the participant's scent preferences to see how well the participants' evaluation of the smell of the rooms lined-up with the premise of the study.

This study was actually just a subset of the premise that happy people are more likely to be grateful and donate their time and/or money than unhappy people, and that environmental factors can influence a person's relative happiness. And a demonstration that an attractive woman can get money and resources from a major university to run a useless study.

No, their premise was "scent vs. nothing", with the presumption that the orange scent was something that everyone would find pleasant. The actual statefulness of smell for people is pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral (or nothing); and that's what the study should have covered in order to make any meaningful conclusion on smell vs. happiness driven ethics. There's no way to derive from their study results what effect an unpleasant smell would have on behavior. It may well be that it's the perception of smell

There is also no way to derive whether the smell of grilled hamburgers would have made more difference than the orange scent. That doesn't make the results worthless. It just means that the study doesn't answer every question, everyone could possibly ask.

No. I'm saying they didn't do the "this room smells bad" part at all. And because the outcome of that test can't be anticipated we know that one, they only got part of the potential answer; and two, because there's the possibility that the "this room smells bad" test may produce even better results, that both their premise and conclusions are biased.

There's no link to the original study, but it was clear from the article that there was no control group. They had a scented room vs. an unscented room, when what they should have had was a "pleasantly" scented room vs. an "unpleasantly" scented room with a third, unscented room as the control. Then they should have done some feedback questionnaires at the conclusion, in which they could have buried a question or two regarding the participant's scent preferences to see how well the participants' evaluation of the smell of the rooms lined-up with the premise of the study.

This study was actually just a subset of the premise that happy people are more likely to be grateful and donate their time and/or money than unhappy people, and that environmental factors can influence a person's relative happiness. And a demonstration that an attractive woman can get money and resources from a major university to run a useless study.

So you're supposing that the mere scenting of a room, with any scent whatsoever, will increase the chance of ethical behavior? Interesting. Sounds like you need to do a follow-on study, rather than bash the first one without having read the original manuscript. According to the article, they *did* have a feedback questionnaire, and the participants did not notice the scent. More importantly, however, we do not know from the article whether this was a double blind study. The devil is in the details for behavioral studies like this, and an easy way to eliminate many uncontrolled variables is to make it double blind.

Finally, it is rather presumptuous to state that BYU funded the research, especially given the list of three total collaborators come from three different universities. Also, I've personally filled out scores of grant applications from my local institution, private foundations, and national agencies. None of them required or even requested a photograph. I'm therefore highly dubious about your last conclusion.

Read my reply above, then go read Dr. Richard Feynman's speech entitled "CARGO CULT SCIENCE" [lhup.edu] and then tell me if you still think there didn't need to be a third group. Because the point isn't what they wanted to test, the point is they weren't testing all the relevant aspects of the situation in order to have a meaningful conclusion.

The study titled "The Smell of Virtue" was unusually simple and conclusive. Participants engaged in several tasks, the only difference being that some worked in unscented rooms, while others worked in rooms freshly spritzed with Windex

...top-notch scientists...

Katie Liljenquist, assistant professor of organizational leadership at BYU's Marriott School of Management, is the lead author on the piece in a forthcoming issue of Psychological Science.

People do. Smells aren't the ones that do that, but associations of it in people's mind. What seem to work in some regions or cultures could have different effects in others.
If associations are the ones that do the job, then trends of decoration (not just smell, but visual, lights, architecture, etc) for public places should follow that ideas. Of course, i don't think that the only alternative that will be good for banks is to look and smell like torture chambers, but probably most elements that promote s

Surround yourself with expensive, old alcohol, expensive stinky cigars, old dead animal furniture... and the smell of used hookers... that's the IDEAL of "good" business men? No wonder we're so fucked up.

Let's get this straight. Windex typically reeks of ammonia. And so do public elevators where winos have urinated.

A coincidence? A paradox? Or, are the guys at Brigham Young sniffing gold spraypaint trying to come up with new ideas? Hmmmmm...?

As bad as the rigor of this study seems to be, your counter-point doesn't actually defeat what it says. Windex, urine, and urine covered up by Windex don't all smell the same, and elevators that are likely to be soiled are very different social settings from rooms at a graduate research center. The social triggers differ with all of these things.

The results of the study don't particularly surprise me. Think of how people act in clean v. dirty bathrooms or how vandalism that isn't cleaned up invites further vandalism. I'm just worried that idiots will think that ALL you need is the *smell* of Windex and not *actual* efforts at cleaning up a cesspit. Or that we'll be assaulted with overbearing smells of cleaning products at banks and stores (which would eventually wear away the mental association and make it *doubly* futile).

That's a nursing home. A hospital smells like a combination of industrial disinfectant, diarrhea, and the hard-to-describe smell that people with active bacterial infections and ulcerated sores give off. It often varies from floor to floor- the ICU and pediatrics floors don't have much of a smell, the surgical floors smell a bit worse, and the general medicine floors can sometimes make you nauseous.

This is a trend in corporate/news/etc photography, to provide photo illustration that's interesting and creative rather than a boring portrait. Check out Strobist [blogspot.com], which in the past couple of years has greatly influenced this kind of photography.

The real answer, though, is this - BYU probably has a staff photographer or two to provide publicity photos. Their assignments probably don't specify to do anything other than a simple portrait, which I'm sure they do - but then since they're bored they also try stu

The OP is probably talking about the iso you can buy in spray bottles; you can get plain and wintergreen scented. I see it used for cleaning gym equipment all the time. It's not expensive; I think I've seen it for around $2.50-$3.00 for 20 oz. I go through 98% iso at work by the gallon ($20-$30/ gal).